Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Non-Tech : The Critical Investing Workshop -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Poet who wrote (34906)	3/20/2001 4:33:37 PM
From: Poet	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 35685

The vigil continues: To:stockman_scott who wrote (34084) From: Voltaire Monday, Mar 19, 2001 10:15 PM View Replies (3) \| Respond to of 34219 Hi Scott, yep we have heard it all before haven't we? Some things never seem to change and they won't here either. The Fed will lower tomorrow with no choice but .50 pts. and the markets will stall slightly and then begin a slow ride up. Go tell it on the mountain - the bottom has been in. The Fleckenstupid's ride is about over. DON'T FIGHT THE FED and BUY THIS MARKET, ESPECIALLY SOME OF THE FALLEN KNIVES AS THEY LAY AT EVERYONE'S FEET. The Houses all upgraded each other today as INTC was downgraded. What a joke. THE SCAM GOES ON. V

To: Poet who wrote (34906)	3/21/2001 10:07:41 AM
From: jambo-bwana	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35685

Good morning Poet I don't know if you have seen this analysis which I picked up during my lurking; if you leave aside the paranoia aspect and MSFT as the "evil empire", the bursting of the dot com bubble has presented MSFT with the opportunity to pick up prize internet companies on the cheap. I read somewhere that they have $27 billion in cash so they don't have to be concerned about how to fund the acquisitions. Rehashed from Forbes.. How Bill Gates and Steve of MSFT couldn't have planned it better! I think they wanted to buy Yahoo worth $96 billon last year this time and Microsoft's $24 billion bank balance--a huge cache by any measure--was rendered strategically impotent today Yahoo total captilisation is $7 billion, not only MSFT can buy it but can add few others also to it shopping list, this how they did it!! May be according to street rumors carried by Forbes, Microsoft decided to start a war of attrition against internet that brought Yahoo! worth $96 billion, Sun Microsystems worth $150 billion, and America Online worth more than $200 billion to fraction of their values today. Steve Ballmer began trashing Net stocks in his public appearances. Microsoft yanked most its corporate advertising from the Web. The last was especially suspicious: Microsoft had its own portal--MSN--to support and was keen to prove its "Net-worthiness" to skeptics. So, why would Microsoft discredit the Net in word and deed and risk looking old economy or hypocritical? Microsoft was suddenly impotent in other ways--and not just from its smackdown by the Clinton Administration's Department of Justice, either. Between 1995 and 2000 Microsoft, like all older companies, suffered a brain drain. Young talent was migrating to the dot-com world. This loss was particularly galling to Bill Gates, who prides himself on his ability to recruit the best and brightest. (Gates once told in the early 1990s, that Goldman Sachs was his chief competitor. Huh? I asked. "Sure," Gates said "We compete in the same IQ pool as the top investment banks.") Losing talent and watching cash decline in relative terms, it's my guess that Gates and Ballmer decided enough was enough--it's time to go to war against these troublesome dot-coms. But rather than launching a direct attack--a political and public relations nonstarter since the DOJ was breathing down its neck--the company stealthily set out to wreck competitors' currency. Classic! Brilliant! And totally expected, hatched as it was from the minds of those two 800-math-SAT-scoring chess masters from Redmond. Ballmer is out the next day trashing Net valuations. And back home, Gates gets the word to the Microsoft ad department to stop all of its corporate advertising online for the remainder of 2000. Gates knows such Microsoft cooling on the Web would give license to chief executives around the world to cut their Web advertising, too. (Gee, if the brilliant Gates is doing it...) And that's precisely what happens. This Microsoft strategy--and it's only a speculation--came to fruition last week when Yahoo! shocked Wall Street with sales figures 25% below estimates. Yahoo!'s market value immediately sank to a three-year low of $7 billion. Microsoft's cash balance, meanwhile, rose to $27 billion. Translation: Microsoft could buy Yahoo! for pocket change if it wanted. The dot-com plague has spread to Net infrastructure giants like Oracle and Sun--the two hated Silicon Valley rivals of Microsoft who funded the legal assault that began in Palo Alto, Calif., five years ago and wound up at the Clinton DOJ. Sun is twice damned: its stock down 70%, and half its employees with options underwater. Meanwhile, Sun's beleaguered sales force is vainly trying to extract profit from its new severs. From California to Virginia, these slick boxes must compete against thousands of year-old boxes from hundreds of dot-com liquidation sales. Boy, has that shut up Sun's Scott McNealy for awhile! Come to think of it, if you're Gates and Ballmer, you couldn't have planned this little Web Armageddon any better. Cash is king once more, and Microsoft wields $27 billion of it. Talent is fleeing back to Redmond. The once uppity Yahoo! goes begging for white knight. Sweetest of all, those loudmouths Larry Ellison and McNealy have been gagged for a season Message 15531497